Design Defined: Organization is key

A Happy Holiday Kitchen

By Lucianna Samu

I couldn’t resist buying a few beautiful new cookbooks dedicated to the art of holiday baking. I am a terrible but tenacious baker and am especially optimistic this season, thanks to new cookie cutters and the books.

The most fascinating of the books is devoted entirely to fondant. My personal fascination with the dragee, those inedible silver balls that make a cookie look (to me) more like Tiffany jewelry than an enticing dessert, is featured throughout the fondant book. The author explains that fondant can even be used to replicate these hard-to-find sparkly cookie decorations; imagine that. Because either a dragee or fondant would look silly on my signature cookie design — the feeble smashed criss-cross of a fork — I’m counting on my cookie-making helpers’ expertise.

One of the other books I bought is all things gingerbread: houses, ladies and farm animals, but mostly gingerbread men, all sporting fancy hats and boots, with piping details so elaborate and clever, Picasso himself would be awestruck. As I mentioned, help is on the way.

Having help in my kitchen is a problem because I am a kitchen loner. The first question I ask any client contemplating a kitchen renovation is whether she prefers to work alone or hopes to have help in her kitchen. Most answer yes to help; they love to invite their friends and family, and even relative strangers, into their kitchen. I’ve stopped trying to conceal my uneasy feelings about this predilection, and assure all concerned that while I’m happy to design a kitchen where even an itinerant French chef could work his magic, I remain dubious about such disorderly culinary adventures.

The first design imperative for what I call the communal kitchen is that everything that is out of sight must be in a relatively predictable place. This concept is best worked out by breaking the entire kitchen into zones; cooking (range), preparation (counter surfaces), cleanup (wet-area) and food storage (pantry and refrigeration). Once accomplished in the design phase, I literally draw the path of two imaginary “cooks” directly onto my drawings. If my imagined “cooks” cross paths every time they need to reach the sink, the trash, the measuring cups or a knife, I take a good, hard look at the floor plan. An extra place for trash is an enormous help in a very busy kitchen, while an extra prep sink is nearly imperative.

Lately, I’ve been planning new kitchens, as well as overall kitchen renovation projects, with a generous amount of empty wall area. Four feet of wall seems the minimum for this concept, which can begin its life as a visual break in the cabinetry where a bold color, blackboard, bookcase or interesting art piece will add interest to the room. When a kitchen is not large enough to forego some amount of wall space, an unfitted piece of furniture, small table or freestanding cabinet will provide additional storage while still leaving a place where the kitchen can evolve.

Nothing pleases me more than to have something old in a brand-new kitchen, and this empty-space concept is another opportunity to experiment with an antique chair, a freestanding storage box or a conversation piece of some kind. For the frugal renovator, it’s worth considering that allowing as much as 8 feet of wall for free-standing furniture can be an enormous budget saver without sacrificing the overall look, or efficiency, of the kitchen.

In my own kitchen, I need to do some de-organizing when help is on the way. Glass canisters keep the baking needs in plain sight on the counters; utensils leave the drawers and stand gleaming in white pitchers, while extra dish cloths, pot holders and aprons replace the kitchen wares on open shelves. The few more utilitarian gadgets, usually stored in my own personalized storage arrangement, are also positioned within easy reach for visiting bakers.

If you, too, are a self-proclaimed loner in the kitchen, you’ll discover such reorganizing (or de-organizing) will help put your holiday helpers at ease while reducing the relentless “where is this” and “do you have that” question-and-answer period. My favorite trick for holiday time is to move a small four-drawer dresser into the kitchen. Borrowed from a guest room, I fill the drawers with the many oddities, linens, candles and special holiday accessories I usually keep stowed out of reach in the pantry. The dresser becomes the repository for all the little ditzy-doo stuff that I would at any other time consider clutter, knowing it’s part of the holiday-time festivities, temporary and somewhat orderly.

The dresser can double as a display surface for outgoing gifts and incoming treats or as an impromptu buffet surface. This year I’m planning to keep giant stacks of overflowing cookie tins and cake dishes on the dresser. I can show off my fancy cookies with the dragees, and if all goes well, the gingerbread house and men. With my fingers crossed, cookie cutters on the counters and stand mixer at the ready, I wish you all a happy, healthy and joyous holiday season, in a very cluttered or even messy kitchen overflowing with helpers.